The first few days

Life as a mom is so different from how I expected. Honestly, it's so much more fun and rewarding than I thought it would be at this point! Here's a little look at what life is like for us as Rowan's parents.

Rowan's a great sleeper. I'm probably still getting five or six hours a night. Which, as a girl who loves sleep, is still less than I'd like, but realistically, I know that's awesome for a newborn. I told myself through the whole pregnancy that there was NO WAY I was going to bed-share, but I was wrong. I find myself having more separation anxiety than I expected. I want him there, cuddled next to me. We've got a co-sleeper next to the bed, but if he gets grunty or squirmy, I just pull him up next to me and he zonks out. (And when he's sleeping quietly, I do, too.) I'm blessed that he'll nurse in the mornings around 6:30 or 7:00 and then go back to sleep with me for another hour and a half or more.

Rowan is probably the most laid-back baby I've ever seen. I thought at first it was because of the jaundice, but that's (mostly) cleared up now and he still is just so chill. He sleeps a lot, but when he's awake, he almost never fusses. He'll just sit and stare at us, or the light from a window, or whatever. He's not a huge fan of diaper changes or sponge baths, or anything that pins him down or makes him be still. He had to be re-hospitalized because of the jaundice, and I could hear him screaming from several rooms away while they did his IV. (I cried more than he did, I think.) My mom stayed with him and said that honestly, she thought he was screaming mostly from being pinned down, rather than from pain. Same with his circumcision. (We had a mohel do the circ...LOVED him.)

all warm under the bili-lights

Daddy and Rowan are bonding more and more, and it totally melts my heart. One of the things that I was most excited about was watching my husband become a father, and it has totally been everything I hoped it would be. Right now he's got Rowan sleeping on his chest, and he's leaned back in the recliner playing Final Fantasy 9. It's adorable.

In terms of post-partum recovery, I'm doing amazingly well. So much so that it almost scares me a little. I keep waiting for the crazy hormones and whatnot to hit me and make me feel lost or overwhelmed or manic, and it just hasn't yet. I'll go ahead and credit that largely to the placenta encapsulation that we did. I've been taking the capsules and haven't had the tiniest bit of baby blues or anything. The only time I cry is when I look at Rowan sometimes and am so overwhelmed with love and joy that I can't help but get weepy. (Scares the heck out of DH, haha.) Again, I am so blessed that PP recovery is going so smoothly. I'm barely even bleeding anymore, at 11 days post-birth. Amazing!

Life as a new mom is way cool. I love my little scrunchy, cuddly baby. I love my husband even more than I did before. To those of you who haven't experienced this yet: I can't wait for you to become moms. It is so, so worth every bit of struggle and prayer and waiting that you're going through right now. I know I didn't have to wait as long as a lot of my friends, and I'm so thankful for that, but I know that to have this little guy in my life, it would've been worth a lifetime of waiting.

Rowan's Very Long Birth Story

On Wednesday, September 12, I had Braxton Hicks. Nothing unusual for a pregnant lady who is 38w3d, right? Except they wouldn't go away. Every five minutes or so, I would have a painless BH contraction. I also noticed that I felt absolutely exhausted, despite having gotten a really good amount of sleep the night before. I was starting to suspect something was up with all those BH contractions, so I went for a walk to stall them out. They kept going. I took a nap...they did not. I called my midwife's office and my favorite nurse, Janette, told me to take a nice hot bath and relax. If they were nothing, they'd stall themselves out. If it was something, they'd keep going. So I took the bath, and they kept going. I was also having some mild spotting, which I assumed was from the cervical check I'd had the day before.

DH and I decided to head down to my mom's house (much closer to the hospital than ours) just in case something was going on. I tried to contact the on-call doctor at the hospital to ask their opinion. They finally called me back and told me that they didn't think I was in labor, but that I could come in and get checked if I wanted to. I did. At 10:30 at night, we got checked in at the ER and sent up to triage. They checked me and I was at a centimeter and a half, and 80% effaced. But, my blood pressure was crazy high. They decided to do a blood draw and a cath urine test (ow) for pre-eclampsia. While I was sitting in the bed waiting for the results of my test, I started having some actual contractions, and then I felt a gush. I paged the nurse and they checked, and sure enough, my water had broken! I was so surprised. It was about 2:30 when contractions started, and I guess around 3:00 when my water ruptured.

They sent us to a real L&D room, and we hunkered down for the long haul. Little did we know HOW long it was going to be! They told me to hang out, and they'd check me again in 4 hours. So I labored, breathed through the increasingly painful contractions, and rejoiced over the fact that my little boy would be in my arms in a few hours. (Or so I thought.) After four hours, they checked my cervix. I was up to 3cm and still 80% effaced. So I labored some more. I was getting SO uncomfortable and was really having a lot of pain with each contraction. DH and I walked the halls, and my mom showed up and walked with me too. I had to stop and lean against the walls when each contraction hit. After another 4 hours, they checked again, and I was at...3 cm, 80% effaced. I was SO discouraged that I hadn't made any progress. They moved me to a room with a seat in the shower so that I could sit in the hot water. They thought that the hot water hitting my chest would stimulate contractions to become more regular and productive. I spent an hour in the shower, and then got out, labored more, and waited. And at the next check? Still 3cm, 80% effaced. I broke down and cried.

At this point, they introduced the idea of Pitocin to try and get my contractions to regulate and become more productive. I was so devastated, but I agreed to try it because I had been without sleep and food for a very long time at this point. The Pitocin made the contractions hit me like a sledgehammer, and I began to REALLY struggle to get through each one. They gradually increased the Pitocin from .5 to 2, and when we got to 2, they offered me Stadol. I was in so much pain that I agreed to try it. The nurse told me that it'd just make me too loopy to care that I was in pain. What she SHOULD have told me was that I was going to go on the craziest psychedelic trip in the world. There were so many colors and images flying around in my head that I don't think I really got much rest under the Stadol, but man, was it fun. While under the Stadol, they increased my Pitocin from a 2 to an 8. When the Stadol wore off, I was suddenly in more pain than I even knew it was possible to experience. I was almost screaming through contractions...I truly felt like I was going to die with each one. After trying my best to labor through them, they checked me again and I had only progressed to 4cm after HOURS of Pitocin. I knew at that point that I couldn't do it without pain meds anymore.

I won't lie...I cried when I finally admitted that I needed the epidural. I wanted a natural birth SO badly, and had mentally and physically prepared myself for it from before I had ever even conceived Rowan. I felt like a failure and a disappointment to myself and to everyone who had encouraged me to go med-free. My sweet nurse Patrice looked in my eyes and told me, "Honey, getting the epidural will not make your birth any less beautiful, I promise you." Getting the epi itself was incredibly painful, especially because it wasn't placed properly the first time and they had to go back and move the catheter to adjust the flow of the meds. Once the numbing spread properly, I crashed. I was so incredibly exhausted. Two hours after the epidural, I woke up and they checked me again. I had gone from 4cm, 80% effaced to complete in TWO HOURS. Wow. It was time to push!

I couldn't feel my legs because of the epi, so I felt like half of my effort on pushes was expended holding my legs. They turned the epi off and let me labor down for a little bit, and once I had a tiny bit of sensation back, I started pushing. They told me that I was doing a great job, which was nice to hear because I couldn't feel much except for some pressure when contractions would start. Rowan's heart rate started decelerating a little with contractions, so the doctor delivering him told me that I needed to push with all my might. After what I think was about 20 minutes of pushing, I felt him crowning (weird sensation!) and a couple pushes later, he was out. They pulled him up on my belly and I burst into tears. He was so beautiful, and had hair!

Rowan Bennett was born at 3:45 a.m. on September 14th. He was 6lbs, 10oz and 19 inches long, and so beautiful. He has his daddy's eyes and nose, but has mommy's lips and fingers. We are so in love.

Rowan is here!

I'm really tired, what with having a newborn and all, but I promise I'll update with his birth story soon. It's a long one, and definitely did NOT go the way I had hoped, but he's here and healthy and that's all that matters.

We're currently dealing with a little jaundice, so T&Ps please that it clears up quickly!

Some stats, and a pic!

Rowan Bennett
September 14th, 2012
3:45 a.m.
6lbs, 10oz
19 inches long

I hate fake-outs.

I woke up this morning at 6:21 to a contraction. A real one. Not Braxton Hicks. (I can kind of see why people say they feel like menstrual cramps, but also...not really.)

And then...nothing.

Except like, 5 Braxton Hicks. And a lot of that "I'm about to have a big cramp" sensation, but no more contractions.

Dang it, body, why you gotta do me like that?!? I told DH we are doing a lot of walking tonight, even if it's still muggy and gross like it was last night. I want little dude OUT and if walking will help, then I'll walk all the way to the dang hospital. Only 45 miles or so...totally doable. ;) We also need to work on Little Boy's room. It's so close to being done, but still so far, and I'm starting to feel like I could just pull my hair out when I walk in that room. I just want it DONE. Which reminds me, I need to finish packing my hospital bag. Man, prepping for a baby is a lot of work.

In other news, DH is sending me to get one last pedicure tomorrow. I'm excited! This will be my third pedicure ever and the last one was faaaantastic. The only downside? I have to shave my legs for this. Ahh, the burden of luxury. Haha.

And on a really sucky note, one of my friends found out she was pregnant a few days ago. Unfortunately, her betas didn't double in 48 hours, and actually dropped by 1. So it doesn't look like this little one will be staying. I know they are heartbroken...this baby was conceived without fertility drugs, which they thought was impossible for them. (They have triplets from previous fertility treatments; she has PCOS and was so excited to have gotten pregnant on her own.) I know how painful a loss is, but I can't understand what it's like to have the IF stuff in the mix, so please pray for them that they can get through this. Miscarriage just sucks. No one should ever have to go through that.

Someone come kick me into gear today, please!

I'm just having one of those days where I don't feel like doing ANYTHING. Granted, it's only 10-something in the morning and I slept a little late, but still. There are plenty of things to do around here, and I just don't feel like doing any of them.

I promised DH that I would pack my hospital bag soon, so I should probably try to do that today. Especially since I'm "term" now and Little Guy could seriously come any day. My midwife is having me come back on Tuesday because my blood pressure was a little high yesterday. If it's still high, she'll check me and possibly do a membrane sweep. Just from her external checking, she said his head is extremely low and asked me if I feel like he has dropped yet. I'm short-waisted so honestly, I can't tell. All I know is that my hips hurt less after last night's sleep than they have in MONTHS. So that's exciting. (Oh, and the membrane sweep? She said that IF it works, he'll be here after 3 days, max. So that could have me holding my baby in my arms by next Friday. That possibility both terrifies and thrills me to no end.)

We had a great Labor Day weekend with DH's parents. Seriously, we are SO spoiled, and we know it and are so thankful for it. We ended up coming home with even more baby stuff, a dress for me to wear postpartum, a couple new ties for DH to wear to work, and we bought ourselves a blender with a food processor attachment with a gift card we had. I am SO excited about the blender! I've been wanting one for ages, to do smoothies with. Our first attempt with them the other night sucked, to be honest, but I've looked up some recipes and hopefully our next batch will be good. :) I want to try some green smoothies with stuff like kale or spinach and just not tell DH what's in them. A little veggies will be good for him!

My brain is officially ready for fall. (I know, I may have mentioned that before, right?) So I went to Hobby Lobby yesterday and bought myself the "ingredients" for a fall wreath for our front door! All of the little items were 40% off except for the actual wreath itself, so I showed them the online coupon and got 40% off of that, too. :) Savvy shopper in the hizzouse. I agonized over what kind of design I wanted, what colors to use, etc etc. Our front door is red so OBVIOUSLY I couldn't do red fall items because it'd blend in, and where's the fun in that? So I ended up with creamy/yellowish and orange, and I'm pretty happy with it. I'm looking forward to the day that I have a decorating budget that allows me to deck the halls for every season and holiday. Fall wreath this year, ceramic pumpkin centerpiece next year? I think yes.